


The Roots That Clutch

by Blacksquirrel



Category: Wire in the Blood
Genre: Bisexual Character, Canon LGBTQ Character, Character Study, F/F, First Time, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:53:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacksquirrel/pseuds/Blacksquirrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The safest route out of the darkness is to follow someone who already knows the way.  Carol returns, but stays lost.  Paula watches, waits, and seizes her opportunity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Roots That Clutch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calleigh_j](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calleigh_j/gifts).



> Title is taken from T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."
> 
> This is a slightly AU melded book and TV universe set after Carol returns from some amalgamation of Germany and/or South Africa. It contains both book and TV characters, and alludes to events from both canons.
> 
> Warning: Although no rape/non-con occurs within the story, both characters are recovering from an unnamed trauma, heavily implied to be the rape and attempted rape from book canon.
> 
> Many thanks to my speedy, smart, and ever supportive beta {redacted until the reveal}.

**  
The Roots That Clutch   
**

Carol Jordan never came back.

Not really.

If Carol Jordan had come back the team would have immediately rallied around her. Even Kevin, who still bristled under the weight of his gratitude, even Stacy, who rarely seemed aware of a world beyond the virtual, even bullheaded careerists like Sam, and even thwarted newcomers like Alex, who had only just found her way out of the long shadow of the gov’s departure, all knew the difference between the pale specter currently issuing orders with cold exactitude from a disinterested perch far above the daily work of catching criminals, and a boss who put politics at a distant third behind results in the street and the safe return of all her detectives. The Superintendent’s crown wouldn’t have altered Carol Jordan’s disdain for politics and the squad would have respected someone from upstairs with her hands still firmly planted in the muck.

If Carol Jordan had come back she would have gathered up her scattered protégés, black sheep, and hidden treasures. Instead, they languished alone on a series of temporary serial offender consulting assignments, merely reacting to an endless series of emergencies which could only really be staunched by a reinvestment of resources from the top. Carol Jordan would have understood that a group of experts moves most swiftly together, when they’ve had time to build trust and awareness of the way their skills intertwine. Carol Jordan would have cared that every day Stacy spent explaining the difference between macs and PCs to a luddite DCI, that Sam spent filling paperwork rather than making the treacherous leaps of faith that underlay his brilliance, and that Tony spent yet again establishing that motive helps solve crime, was a day that blunted, perhaps irreparably, the sharpest crime fighting tools at the force’s disposal.

If Carol Jordan had come back the separation would have made her brave and she would not have tolerated the distance between herself and Tony for a moment more. They would have embraced as soon as they’d seen each other, whether in the airport, on the street, in private, or right on the floor of the squad room, before colleagues and criminals alike. It wouldn’t have mattered that he was with Alex now, because they would both still crave the honesty of touch. After having been denied each other for too long, they would cleave together with the chaste intimacy of two halves of a soul, no longer divided by pretense. Time would have been too precious to waste on pretense, if Carol had come back.

But the pinched, sharp woman in the Superintendent’s office did none of those things. She ghosted through the station in Carol Jordan’s shoes, with the echo of Carol’s voice and Carol’s frown but not her smile. This Carol who was not Carol prickled awkwardly around Tony’s unforeseeable new happiness, his unfathomable newfound groundedness, and Tony visibly drooped in response, circling her with bewildered pain which gave way to a slow withdrawal as his initial excitement at the illusory reunion drained day by day. This Carol who was not Carol looked right through Sam, Kevin, Stacy, and Alex as she sent them out on the same series of fools’ errands as her predecessor and icily ignored and avoided her own welcome home party and every invitation for drinks and reconnection that followed until the neglected invitations trickled to a halt. In the wake of the realization that this Carol would not bring the band back together everyone settled into bitter resignation, faint memories of what it had been like to be part of something greater flickering teasingly through the fog of memory.

Paula saw all these things, and noted with guilty satisfaction that this Carol could not meet her eyes, because despite the heartache and broken hopes caused by the return of this familiar stranger, Paula felt the faint stirrings of triumph.

If Carol had come back, she would not have had any space in her heart for Paula.

It hadn’t taken long for Paula to see that this Carol’s brittle careerism was shot through with hundreds of ragged cracks, beneath which lay a brutalized, broken thing that called out only to her. Paula knew that no one else could see it, knew that this Carol performed a perfect pantomime of indifference. Paula would have liked to think that the skills in the interrogation room that made her valuable to the squad were responsible, but she could not believe the lie. Every time she briefly held Carol’s gaze before it quickly skittered away, she felt the bruised, cracked edge within herself rise to meet its mirror. She knew the despair that lurked beneath this Carol’s surface because she had felt the sting of its teeth and held it at bay with grim determination for years now, since the case that had pulled her into the darkness. It was clear to Paula that Carol had locked herself inside with the beast, hadn’t had the lifeline of friends, familiar surroundings, and Dr. Hill’s voice, not Tony but Dr. Hill when he used the voice trained to sound like hope, to pull her away from the monster within and firmly bolt the cadge door behind.

Paula didn’t know what had left the gaping void in Carol’s heart, but she was certain that she could fit there, even belong there, as her own heart ached in tandem.

`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Paula followed orders and took serial consultancies from Penzance to Sunderland, but the close of each case always brought her back to Bradfield and the stark corner office where Carol presided. Each time Paula stretched her report just a few moments longer, measuring the long lines of Carol’s throat in the interval between recounting profile and prosecution, tempting herself with glimpses of surprisingly fragile wrists and the incongruous softness beneath Carol’s chin.

Using every bit of studied nonchalance at her disposal Paula carefully coaxed out tiny confidences. Miniscule things at first, a comment on the weather, but any reaction from the down to business Superintendent felt deliciously like intimacy. She lived for those disclosures, spent her time on the road fantasizing about sitting in the blandly cream and chrome office, subtly pushing and pushing at Carol’s defenses until her thoughts spilled over. On cold, damp nights in seedy police-stipend-approved hotels she revisited each confession in her collection, running her mind over them like fingers across a string of pearls. “I missed the rain,” Carol had admitted after Paula dropped half an hour of hints about umbrellas and anoraks. “I feel old sometimes,” Carol whispered over a report on murdered children. “Nothing tastes of anything anymore,” Carol said, attempting flippancy when Paula protested as she discarded her lunch to clear her desk for their meeting. “This job kills us all slowly,” tumbled out despite steadily ignoring an hour of Paula’s prompts to speak about the latest atrocity Tony brought in.

Always she pushed just that bit further, found some question or pretense to linger just that bit longer, and shuddered inside when Carol’s smooth surface cracked open to admit her an inch further inside. Paula had always played a long game, slowly drawing out seemingly insignificant confidences until suspects instinctively gave her their trust and with it their secrets. Years later, many of them still wouldn’t understand why they’d opened themselves to her so deeply. Paula could wait, because she knew that eventually sharing rain, hunger, and cynicism would add up to something significantly more profound. She expected that finally tasting the lines of throat, wrist, and chin that she’d traced a hundred times with her eyes would require patience.

She didn’t expect Carol to so suddenly push back. It was what the old Carol would have done, and the familiar fire it brought out in her eyes sent a thrill of anticipation shivering down Paula’s spine.

Nothing unusual stood out about the day’s briefing. She played her usual games, searching for a window into Carol’s new life, when suddenly her blandly stated but laden comment on the upcoming weekend’s strong candidacy for a mini-break (When did you last get away, Carol? Where did you go? Who shared your bed? You know you’d like to tell me.), prompted neither silence, nor a curt dismissal, nor one of those precious tidbits, but instead the first level stare she’d received from Carol since her return. Carol slowly stood and braced her hands on her desk as she leaned forward to stare down at Paula, and Paula felt her breath stutter and quicken. “This has gone on long enough,” Carol stated firmly.

Testing to see how long this resolve would last, or if the familiar indifference would intervene and split them apart, Paula said, “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

“I’ve spent my life surrounded by crooks and cons; of course I know when I’m being manipulated,” Carol growled. “Did you forget who I am?”

“No,” Paula calmly replied, “But I think you’d forgotten.”

A sticky silence filled the room and Carol vibrated with indignant energy, as though her body had forgotten how to deal with a rush of temper. Finally she demanded, “What do you want from me?”

“I want you,” Paula said simply, and she allowed the sting of that honesty a moment to penetrate before continuing on. “But I don’t think you’ve been ready to let anyone see you for a long time.”

Carol recoiled and her face went slack as the smooth, imperturbable shell descended. Paula held her breath as she considered what to do if she’d just lost for good. Precious little satisfaction remained in her current job. Transience suited her poorly and if she couldn’t have even the fantasy of Carol to hold onto there was little point in continuing to move from one assignment and one town to another, leaving behind no lasting impact and putting down no roots. She could no longer go on, groundless.

But whatever embers had stirred that day would not be so easily put out. Carol shook her head and squared her shoulders. “And what would you do once you had me?” she asked sardonically. “You wouldn’t like what you’d get.”

Paula immediately stood, fueled by the challenge in Carol’s glare. Wordlessly she reached into Carol’s space and retrieved a pen and pad, scrawling an address in bold block capitals. Dropping it on the desk between them with a loud smack, she pushed one last time, “Meet me tonight, and let me be the judge of that.”

Without a backwards glance she strode out of the office, leaving in her wake the loudly unspoken words, “If you still can.”

`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

Smoke curled and colored lights danced through the crowd as Paula weaved her way to the bar. Everything about the club screamed “gay” as loudly as possible, and she had arranged the meeting there deliberately to effectively require a statement of knowing intent from Carol should she choose to enter. Even before she placed her order a giddy buzz enveloped her. For years she had watched elegant, strong, authoritative Carol and yearned, yet always remembered that Carol was far too elegant, too independent, too far up the ranks for the likes of her. Too straight as well, but if she showed up tonight …

And even before doubt could begin to take hold, there she was, a monochrome vision in pale skin, cream silk, and khakis slicing through the seething throng. Paula forgot her waiting drink, forgot brilliant but out of reach old Carol and barely held together, brittle new Carol to take the beckoning hand of this strange creature. Paula followed her into the very center of the writhing mass and gasped when she realized just how tightly they’d become entwined as they began to sway to the music. Without conscious thought she submitted to the hand on her hip that guided her, the fingertips at her nape that teased her, the broad back beneath her own palms sending waves of warmth through her. Straining up on her tiptoes Paula brushed Carol’s soft cheek against her own to reach her lips up toward one softly curved ear.

“I think you’ve done this before,” she breathed and her words danced through the hair at Carol’s shoulder.

The hand at her hip pulled her even closer and one long thigh pressed intimately against her. Paula gasped, and Carol replied, “Once or twice, but I think you’ll help me if I’m rusty.”

The bass line thrummed through her spine, pushing her impossibly further into Carol’s embrace until she could feel the firm tips of nipples pressing against her chest. From every direction heat rolled through the dance floor and she watched as a line of perspiration rose across Carol’s clavicle. Then Carol leaned down to lick at the very same spot of exposed flesh above Paula’s breast in one long, hot swipe. Paula let out a startled moan. “Yours or mine?” she asked, done with patience.

It wasn’t meant to be a difficult question, but Carol’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Yours,” she decided, and Paula had only a moment to spare on confusion before urgency propelled her out of the club and into her car for the most difficult drive across town she’d ever made, as Carol maddeningly insisted on tracing the veins at the underside of the wrist on the gear shift.

As soon as she’d put the car into park they flew through the door of her apartment building and up the stairs, pausing only to toss purses and car keys to the floor before finding themselves plastered together again in the kiss Paula had dreamed of with every touch in the club, every confession in Carol’s office, every hidden gaze, every case and every interrogation and every stakeout and every after arrest drink they’d ever shared. She poured years of longing into Carol’s body with frantic swipes of lips, teeth, and tongue, and Carol absorbed it all, magnifying that desire somewhere in the recesses of her unfathomable depths, only to pour it out again, a mute testimony to the freeing of some emotion too long locked away.

Blindly, Carol tumbled them through the apartment, and after backing them into a broom closet, pausing to tip Paula onto the kitchen counter and work a hand beneath the back of her shirt, nibble her earlobe pressed into the doorframe of the bathroom, and pull Paula onto her lap for a long minute of deep kisses and frustrated grinding on the couch, they fell backwards across Paula’s bed. Running her hand across the new sheets beneath her, Paula smiled that this time at last, her precaution had not been in vain – there would be someone to cling to inside the confines of this freshly made bed. And then thought vanished as Carol looked down at her and their frantic pace slowed while she reverently opened buttons and parted zippers, revealing Paula inch by inch.

Looking up at the elegant angles of Carol’s long frame, Paula fought the urge to cover the bit of pudge around her middle where her increasingly sedentary life had begun to assert itself. But just as she began to wiggle away from the intensity of Carol’s gaze, Carol shook her head and frowned as her hands came down to sooth away the lines of anxiety on Paula’s face. “No,” she said contemplatively, “I need to look,” and Paula grasped that the gravity of the moment had nothing to do with an inventory of her body’s flaws, but instead the unwelcome interruption of something unseen. Paula reached for Carol’s hand and slowly, deliberately, drew their fingertips across the contours of her torso, from her rounded shoulders, across her pert bust, down the ladder of her ribs to the swell of her stomach, dipping into her belly button, chasing away the lingering traces of the past with the solidity of her flesh.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked quietly and found herself bathed in the warmth of a smile that bloomed softly across Carol’s troubled countenance, melting the grip of the past. “No, nothing is wrong,” Carol replied, voice full of surprised delight.

Carol pulled her silk tank over her head, revealing the peaked rosy nipples whose touch had taunted Paula all night, then leaned down to seal her joy into Paula’s waiting lips. Distracted but determined, Paula pulled and tugged at Carol’s trousers until the closure gave way and they kicked them off together, laughing when their feet tangled in a pile of khaki cotton and lace panties.

Once free, Paula tipped them on their sides and captured one soft breast in her palm, stroking its heavy underside as she moaned into their renewed kiss. Carol let out a strangled sound when she used one thumb nail to trace the edge of the areola, and in a flash of movement Paula found herself flat on her back again with her hands pinned at her sides. “Wait your turn,” Carol panted, and Paula squeaked in assent as Carol traced a burning trail down her breast bone to lap lazily at the point of her right hip. She could feel the heat of Carol’s body where she had settled between her legs, but all her writhing and pleading moans did nothing to interrupt Carol’s contented inspection.

“Carol!” she cried in frustration, and she felt a low chuckle tickle against her thigh in response before Carol bit down gently, peering up at her with dark promise in her wide eyes. Then with agonizing deliberation she tongued her way down and Paula lost all sense of time. Carol’s hands left hers to bracket her thrusting hips so she reached down to feather Carol’s hair between her fingers and stroke her brow and run her fingers slickly to the place they were joined, dragging them wetly through the pleasure driving her rapidly toward the edge. The sensations of heat, wet, pressure, and suction almost paled in comparison to knowing that it was Carol wringing this delight from her. Carol’s lips squeezing her humming clit, Carol’s teeth so gently tracing the edges of her buzzing labia. The next time they were in a briefing Paula knew she wouldn’t be able to pull her eyes away from the sight of Carol’s tongue at the edge of her coffee cup now that she knew what it felt like inside of her. Carol smirked up at her, as if she could see what Paula had been thinking, as if she was picturing it too, the pair of them hiding in plain sight, shuddering with the echo of this moment’s ecstasy. Carol’s eyebrow arched in confirmation and Paula threw back her head as she came.

Her whole body buzzing, she reached drowsily for Carol, but Carol stopped her hand. “Oh, did I say you got a turn?” she asked mock innocently. “Maybe next time,” she said. Crawling back up her body, Carol leaned up to find her lips again and Paula tasted her orgasm in their kiss. Before she could even begin to recover Carol snaked a hand between them stroking where she’d left her slick and open. With a groan Carol slipped three fingers inside of Paula, fitting her own pelvis to the back of her hand as she began to thrust. Still quaking with aftershocks, Paula’s toes curled as Carol’s palm found her clit again and again, returning her to the brink even faster and sharper than before. Their lips slid against each other sloppily as urgency overwhelmed finesse. Above her, Carol let out a long, pleading moan, and her thrusts became hard and ragged. Carol closed her eyes and swiveled her hips, her fingers curling roughly upwards, and Paula came apart completely, clenching her fingers around Carol’s biceps, squeezing her thighs around Carol’s waist, and only barely aware of the last few thrusts that sent her pleasure spiraling on and on.

Carol collapsed on top of her, shivering and spent, and they drifted until one of them shivered with cold rather than delight, prompting them to rearrange the pillows and covers. Carol’s eyes were closed so Paula traced her eyelashes, her hairline, the bow of her mouth, until Carol’s eyes snapped open and she captured the wandering digits in a kiss. “Tony knew you’d be good for me,” she murmured.

Paula tensed. “Was I doctor’s orders, then?” she asked with a dangerous edge in her voice.

“Not as such,” Carol hedged, looking away, “more like doctor’s meddling suggestion.”

For a moment Paula withdrew, collapsed in on herself to become as small as she felt, an inconsequential totem passed between two titans. But then she flashed upon the bottomless darkness where Tony found her after the attack. She remembered his voice leading her up, promising her that things could be good for her again. “Find someone you trust, Paula. Someone who makes you feel safe. Someone who makes you feel like yourself.”

“I look nothing like him,” Paula stated firmly.

“Like Tony?” Carol questioned, confused.

“Like the man who hurt you,” Paula said unforgivingly, refusing to shy away from the truth. “I look nothing like him, and I remind you of before – of who you were before.”

“Yes,” Carol whispered, pulling away, rolling over and sitting up as if preparing to bolt. “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely.

Paula reached out and laid a steadying hand on Carol’s shoulder, smoothing it down her back and up again, lightly drawing her back into the covers. When they were laying fact to face once more she said, “Never be sorry for needing me. I’ll be your anchor, if you’ll be mine.”

Carol released a broken sigh, breath hitching as the panic and regret drained away under Paula’s soothing hand. “I didn’t think I was ready – not for the job, not for the team, certainly not for you. But between you and Tony – the pair of you – totally relentless.”

Paula wished she were a better person, one who hadn’t felt the pinch of jealousy since this conversation began, winced as it wound tighter with each iteration of Tony’s name. But she couldn’t abide the thought of stolen weekends in Bradfield once a month, only to leave Carol to the steady companionship of another. “Will you be going back to working with Tony again permanently, then,” she asked, sad and resigned, and Carol’s immediate “Yes, of course,” nearly drowned Paula under a tide of bitterness so that she barely heard the words that followed: “I’ll be working with all of you again.”

“What?” she asked, dumbfounded.

Carol looked at her quizzically, as if she were a star pupil unexpectedly last to answer. “I’m not just a Superintendent – I’m still a Detective Superintendent and I fully intended to lead a team for major investigations. But I was waiting for just the right case – the one that would show off what we can do, the one special enough that the higher brass wouldn’t question the expenditure of resources. Stalling, Tony called it. I wasn’t ready yet. I said I hadn’t found the right case yet, but really I was searching for something within myself, some magical sign that I was ready to dig in again.” Carol paused and looked Paula over, nodding in something Paula could only call pride. “But you,” Carol continued, “you wouldn’t let it go – wouldn’t let me go. You found me when I couldn’t find myself.”

Paula ducked her head, sheepish and pleased at the same time, then looked up, ventriloquizing Tony’s words to her from years before, “I only saw what was there and gave you a push – you did the hard work yourself.”

“But I couldn’t have done it alone,” Carol said, eyes fixed on the distance. It sounded like she’d heard or said the phrase many times before, but only just in that moment realized its truth.

“So,” Paula prodded hopefully, “this means the band is back together?”

Carol laughed, broad and unfettered. “Yes,” she confirmed, “the band is back together.” Then, pulling Paula into another kiss that quickly darkened and turned hot she added, “But not today. Tomorrow will be plenty soon enough.”

Paula smiled into the kiss, pushing Carol onto her back. “Tomorrow,” she agreed. “Tonight I’m still owed my turn.”


End file.
